Clifton/Ash Plantation

Clifton/Ash Plantation. . , You are standing at the southeast corner of what was once the 1,440-acre Clifton Plantation. , In 1847, John Dobbins Murrell, a native of Virginia, purchased the property from J.B. Robinson and his wife Lucy from Louisiana. At that time, the property contained some 900 acres. By 1861, the Murrells had enlarged the plantation to 1,360 acres and, according to land records owned seventy enslaved people, thirty mules, cattle, hogs, sheep, wagons and farm equipment of every kind, and household and kitchen furnishings. , In 1880, Sophia Murrell Ash and her husband, Dr. Matthew Ash, a Jackson druggist, owned the plantation. On November 19, 1881, tragedy struck when a tornado destroyed the home and injured Sophia, two of their children, and five others. By 1883, a smaller house was built to replace the original Clifton plantation home, now renamed the Ash Place. , Following her husband Matthew's death, Sophia Murrell Ash sold the property in 1914 to James T. Mefford, Lawrence A. Horton, and Joseph J. Vaughan of Franklin, Tennessee. The Vaughn and the Tucker families lived and worked on the plantation until Joseph and Helen Richardson acquired the property in 1926. The Richardsons renamed the property 'Hill View' where they owned and operated a cattle farm. , All but twenty acres of the original plantation property have been sold over the years to make way for the development and growth of Ridgeland, including land deeded to Madison County in 1936 for the construction of what would become Richardson Road. The 1883 Ash house still stands and has been owned by the Richardson family since 1926.